"Glaring errors" in the Douay-Rheims?

[Mintaka]

Re: original language – It’s pretty likely that Jesus spoke Aramaic (native tongue), Greek (commercial common tongue for the whole Roman Empire), and Hebrew (for Scriptural religious stuff). So anything Jesus said, it’s a very open question what language he said it in.

Re: hapax words, this is where it’s handy to study other Greek literature, particularly Christian literature, because presumably near-contemporary Christians would know what they were talking about.

Re: “glaring errors”, you ain’t lived until you’ve seen all the Septuagint and other variant readings in all the Vetus Latina and Vetus Italica Bibles. It’s good stuff. That’s why it keeps kicking around in people’s quote collections even after the Vulgate is well established.

“Terra es, et in terra ibis.”

 

[patrick457]

Re: original language – It’s pretty likely that Jesus spoke Aramaic (native tongue), Greek (commercial common tongue for the whole Roman Empire), and Hebrew (for Scriptural religious stuff). So anything Jesus said, it’s a very open question what language he said it in.

Re: hapax words, this is where it’s handy to study other Greek literature, particularly Christian literature, because presumably near-contemporary Christians would know what they were talking about.

Re: “glaring errors”, you ain’t lived until you’ve seen all the Septuagint and other variant readings in all the Vetus Latina and Vetus Italica Bibles. It’s good stuff. That’s why it keeps kicking around in people’s quote collections even after the Vulgate is well established.

“Terra es, et in terra ibis.”

Minor nitpick: the terms Vetus Latina and Vetus Italica refer to the same thing/s: Latin translations of the Bible executed before St. Jerome did his translations which would become known as the Vulgate. Otherwise yes.

 

[patrick457]

And Bar Kochba:

Considering that he was pretty much disavowed after his revolt ended in a catastrophic failure (that he became known as bar-kozeba ‘son of lies’), why would there be any reason for his name to be written into the Biblical text, supposing that things had indeed gone as was mentioned?

 

[Khalid]

And just so we’re clear: the latest possible date for the DSS is now usually given as AD 70. Generally, the scrolls are assigned a 200 BC-AD 70 range, with a small portion stretching back to the 3rd century BC, and the bulk of the extant material dating from the 1st century BC.

That’s all that I said, and all that I meant: that some of the DSS come from years after Christ. If I’m not mistaken, the Qumran community, and the DSS, showed spikes in activity every so often, and the second to last of those was during the First Jewish Revolt AD 66-70, and the last was in the Third Jewish Revolt/The Bar Kochba Revolt in AD 132-135, after which the community went silent for all time (this is where my “Bar Kochba snark” came from).

I never made a specific commitment to a date for 1QIsa, but anything earlier than BC 70 seems to stretch the evidence to me. BC 100 is close to the edge of reason.

Also, no matter the percentages (which you just pulled off the Wikipedia article, and which I put there!), the fact that any number of scrolls that can not be accounted for by chance parallel the LXX demonstrates that the LXX is an exemplar of a most ancient textual tradition, in the face of some who would like to claim it was still be altered at Jerome’s time (confusing the Old Greek with Theodotion’s Daniel and Symmachus).

The matter isn’t that the majority of textual witnesses agree with the LXX - it’s that the most ancient ones do. The older a specific fragment, the more likely it’ll be closer to the LXX reading.

If so, analysts a millennium in the future would have to conclude from our Bibles in the West that the Septuagint was completely lost somewhere between 450 and 1500 AD, as we don’t use it; the greater the time differential between us and the original, the more we tend to lean towards the Hebrew, for some reason, our scholars considering it to be more “original”, as it was the ancestral tongue (albeit forgotten after the exile) of the people who originally received the revelation; only later was it revived (the Hebrew has shown a great resilience, unlike Latin, in becoming either a comatose or dead language and then reviving). However, before the DSS were discovered, it (the LXX) was demonstrably less original and more corrupt than the tradition preserved by the LXX (and even Theodotion); after the discovery of the DSS, it’s about equal to most of them, some DSS being more ancient, some being less.

And there’s no doubt the LXX was made over a decently long period of time, beginning somewhere around BC 300-250 for the Torah, and likely ending in the middle of the second century BC for the Prophets and Writings. If one wants to consider the books of Maccabees and Sirach as having been long canonical and based on Hebrew originals, the translation may have ended in the early first century BC - around the same time as 1QIsa.

Also, the skill and style of the translators varied greatly. The Torah (all translated at once, probably the root, if any, of the old “Legend of 70” and the name “LXX”) is beyond literal, almost an interlinear translation, which shows that a strong Hebrew underlay it, and possibly, that it was used in conjunction with the Hebrew for a time (in which cases, it would always reflect the current Jewish understanding of the text). However, that textual tradition is long dead and lost, except for the exemplars rediscovered in the last 60 years in Qumran. Isaiah, being the book where the rendering “virgin” comes from, denotes either a textual variant to “almah” (probably “bethulah”), or the current understanding at the time of Isaiah’s translation of the passage, being something like “a young woman who is a virgin” (we can see a similar thing today looking at the book, wondering, “Why is the LORD calling a young woman conceiving a sign? It’s not miraculous.”). The translator of Isaiah is also idiosyncratic; he travels between the greatest extremes of completely flawless eloquence to the depths of near incompetence many times - this, the last sentence, being the best argument against the interpretation of “virgin”.

I just saw your graph (no, I didn’t make that one, someone else did): is it any coincidence that the MT has no identifiable ancestors - i.e., they’re all lost - until it pops up? Every other textual tradition has at least limited provenance. The main question this stands for is in pre-DSS times, the MT was demonstrably inferior; today, it’s got some bolstering (as has the LXX) from the DSS - only in the last 60 years has it become a historically and intellectually viable alternative to the LXX. So why the Hell did translators use it 400 years ago? (Albeit old translations - KJV and earlier - generally were much more liberally sprinkled with LXX readings than modern ones, the NRSV finally reversing the trend since the RV1881 of “more Hebrew!!!”, albeit at too great of a cost - pervasive feminism - for me to bear. On the other hand, Catholic translations until Divino Afflante Spiritu were all based on the Vulgate, itself based on ancient and lost Hebrew, another witness to the “virgin” reading [unless you’d argue that the Vulgate’s Isaiah is the VL with minor emendation].)

 

[Khalid]

And I know that it hasn’t been explicitly referred to yet, but I’ll address that old idea about the ‘Council of Jamnia’ in advance lest someone bring that up.

The idea of a ‘council’ in Yavneh aka Jamnia was first formulated by the Jewish scholar Heinrich Graetz in the 19th century based on what he saw as evidence in rabbinic literature. For much of the 20th century his hypothesis was accepted by a majority of scholars but a reassessment of Graetz’s sources starting from the 1960s led to the idea being increasingly challenged.

All we know is that before Jerusalem fell in AD 70, Rabbi Johanan ben-Zakkai established an academy at Yavneh which proceeded to function like a Sanhedrin between the period between the Jewish revolts of AD 70-132. He was then succeeded by Rabbi Gamaliel II. Somewhere between AD 80 and 117 Gamaliel was temporarily deposed from his position; Eleazar ben-Azariah was installed as head of the academy in the interim. According to the Mishnah, at the day of Eleazar’s installation, the sages ruled that both Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes are both holy books, i.e. “make the hands unclean.” The same passage then goes on to state that “all the Holy Scriptures render the hands unclean”, and so it is clear that the point at issue was whether the two books ranked among the Scriptures. This passage is then followed by a series of enactments introduced by the stock phrase “on that day” (Mishnah Yadaim 3.5-4.4). Later tradition (Talmud, tractate Berakhoth 28a) claims that every ruling prefixed by this phrase were all literally made on that very day.

People assume official action taken at specific meetings held at specific dates when they hear the term ‘council’. They tend to think of something like Nicaea or Trent or Vatican II. But in reality, it would seem that the deliberations at Yavneh were closer to the character of a school, academy, or court. All that the above story about the Songs of Songs and Ecclesiastes tell us was that there was some debate about the exact status of these books. In fact, it would seem that the dispute were not terminated by the decisions at Yavneh: thd famous Rabbi Meir in the late 2nd century (way after the ‘council’ is supposed to have occurred) continued to dispute the idea that Ecclesiastes had special status. There is no evidence that the status of other writings was debated, or that a definitive final decision was reached in Yavneh.

The hypothesis however, admits of a looser definition. Hence, many of those who continue to accept the hypothesis now define the term as a loose and unsatisfactory one, more of a convenient catch-all symbol designating the decisions that the schools that gathered at Yavneh had reached, which could represent the crystallization of long processes that occurred in early Judaism. In any case, it is even doubtful whether the actions of the academy at Yavneh were official decisions; there was probably no body in Judaism that functioned in an ‘official’ capacity post-AD 70.

I would put the latest “official body” in the AD 120s, right before the beginning of the Third Jewish Revolt (again, the Council at Jamnia, as it had the character of an “interim Sanhedrin”, for lack of better phraseology). Beyond that, I don’t disagree with any point therein raised - the Council was certainly an ongoing procedure, and I don’t think many would disagree.

All processes of canonization - Jewish and Christian - are much more organic than is often believed. That isn’t to say necessarily grassroots, but that no Scriptures dropped fully-formed out of the sky (a necessary presupposition of sola scripturists) but were canonized in various stages over the course of centuries, books being rendered “more” or “less” canonical by different people and schools of thought at different times in different geographical locations. For a Christian example, the Book of Revelation was long denied status in the East, until the AD 300s, and to this day is not read in the Liturgy of the Orthodox; however, in the East, the Book of Hebrews was accepted from the earliest times. The opposite situation occurred in the West: Hebrews was often considered apocryphal, but Revelation was accepted.

And then, the famous mangler of the Canon, Martin Luther, came along, and began to challenge everything he didn’t agree with in the Scriptures, and anything that cast sola fide in to doubt: he himself classified (and it almost caught on) Hebrews, James, the letters of Peter, etc. as apocryphal, as they were lacking in the “gospel character” or something similar in his own words (i.e. they might be amenable to a Catholic interpretation); the same with 2 Maccabees in the OT; scriptural evidence against his beliefs, so it was excised. So on. Many books can (and have) be written on this topic; I can not give it a fair treatment here. Only a historical example of the long process of canonization.

 

[patrick457]

That’s all that I said, and all that I meant: that some of the DSS come from years after Christ. If I’m not mistaken, the Qumran community, and the DSS, showed spikes in activity every so often, and the second to last of those was during the First Jewish Revolt AD 66-70, and the last was in the Third Jewish Revolt/The Bar Kochba Revolt in AD 132-135, after which the community went silent for all time (this is where my “Bar Kochba snark” came from).

To be more exact, Fr. Roland de Vaux identified three phases in the sectarian occupation of Qumran, based on stratigraphic and architectural evidence: Period Ia (third quarter of 2nd century BC), Period Ib (100 BC-31 BC), and Period II (4-1 BC-AD 68). The site was first inhabited during the late Iron Age (8th-7th century BC), then abandoned for several hundred years when the new population that established the sectarian settlement arrived, perhaps around the reign of John Hyrcanus (Period Ia). The settlement then expanded greatly and acquired its definitive form during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (Period Ib). The end of Period Ib was marked by an earthquake and a fire, when the site was temporarily abandoned. Soon the site was cleared and reoccupied by the same community that had left it, up to its destruction by fire in AD 68, which marks the end of the sectarian settlement of Qumran (Period II). There is a Period III after that, wherein a small garrison of Roman soldiers apparently inhabited the site, at least up until Masada fell in AD 73-4. And yes, there is also some indication of a temporary small-scale occupation of the site during the Bar Kochba period, the main evidence consisting of ten coins under a bowl buried under a room, though it does seem quite unlikely that the occupants were the same community who inhabited it before.

So goes Fr. De Vaux’s scheme. Though of course other possible scenarios also exist: Jodi Magness (The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls) has proposed that Period Ia, due to scanty evidence for this supposed phase, does not exist per se but should instead be considered an early stage of Period Ib. Period Ib is then to be divided into two stages: a pre-earthquake phase (100-50 BC - 31 BC) and a post-earthquake phase (31 BC-9/8 BC or some time thereafter). She disagrees with Fr. De Vaux’s proposal of temporary abandonment of the site.

 

[patrick457]

Also, no matter the percentages (which you just pulled off the Wikipedia article, and which I put there!), the fact that any number of scrolls that can not be accounted for by chance parallel the LXX demonstrates that the LXX is an exemplar of a most ancient textual tradition, in the face of some who would like to claim it was still be altered at Jerome’s time (confusing the Old Greek with Theodotion’s Daniel and Symmachus).

Hey, congratulations!

The matter isn’t that the majority of textual witnesses agree with the LXX - it’s that the most ancient ones do. The older a specific fragment, the more likely it’ll be closer to the LXX reading.

Citations, please?

If so, analysts a millennium in the future would have to conclude from our Bibles in the West that the Septuagint was completely lost somewhere between 450 and 1500 AD, as we don’t use it; the greater the time differential between us and the original, the more we tend to lean towards the Hebrew, for some reason, our scholars considering it to be more “original”, as it was the ancestral tongue (albeit forgotten after the exile) of the people who originally received the revelation; only later was it revived (the Hebrew has shown a great resilience, unlike Latin, in becoming either a comatose or dead language and then reviving).

While it was thought during the early half of the 20th century that Hebrew had completely ceased to be a spoken language early as by the start of the Hellenistic Period in 4 BC, being superseded by Aramaic and Greek, and that Hebrew was ‘revived’ by the later Rabbis who penned the Mishna and Talmud, the discovery of the DSS has challenged this view. Now it is generally thought that a form of Hebrew still continued to co-exist with Aramaic and other languages spoken within the Holy Land during the final centuries before Christ and the first centuries of the Christian era, now preferring to date the actual demise of the spoken language much later (around the 3rd-4th century AD, for instance, after the publication of the Mishna). How Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic co-existed with one another is still unclear, however, and different summaries have been put forward by different people.

 

[Big_Dummy]

I take it from the silence that “East and West” has no evidence to back up his/her statement.

Anyone else?

Genesis 3:15 comes to mind, in context the woman is Eve, not Mary.

 

[Khalid]

Citations, please?

I’ll pull them up - most are not from my personal library.

For a lousy example, IQIsa is earlier than IQIsb but IQIsb agrees more fully with the MT and IQIsa with the LXX (albeit both are considered proto-Masoretic). Also, arguments from agreement of the Samaritan Pentateuch (granted, it’s only the Pentateuch) with the LXX over and against the MT, which happen in about 2000 places out of 6000 differentials (albeit about 3000 of those remaining 4000 differentials are slight differences in spelling and much of the rest are deliberate attempts to keep a more ancient form of the language in the S5, and some had sectarian impetus, such as changing the location of the Sanctuary of the Lord).

 

[Khalid]

Genesis 3:15 comes to mind, in context the woman is Eve, not Mary.

The context of the seed of the woman is Jesus Christ, the New Adam, and the New Eve who gave him birth.

The part about the Blessed Virgin is much more obvious in the ancient Vulgate translation, but the part about Christ’s defeat of Satan is obvious in pretty much all modern ones as well.

 

[patrick457]

I’ll pull them up - most are not from my personal library.

For a lousy example, IQIsa is earlier than IQIsb but IQIsb agrees more fully with the MT and IQIsa with the LXX (albeit both are considered proto-Masoretic). Also, arguments from agreement of the Samaritan Pentateuch (granted, it’s only the Pentateuch) with the LXX over and against the MT, which happen in about 2000 places out of 6000 differentials (albeit about 3000 of those remaining 4000 differentials are slight differences in spelling and much of the rest are deliberate attempts to keep a more ancient form of the language in the S5, and some had sectarian impetus, such as changing the location of the Sanctuary of the Lord).

I’ve got time.

By the way, do you also know of the Nash Papyrus?

 

[patrick457]

Khalid, just to let you know I’m still waiting.

 

[Khalid]

For what? I forgot this thread entirely, although it was still in my subscriptions.

I’ll re-read it and see - I’m assuming it was evidence for later activity at Qumran than ~68 AD? For some reason I remember looking that up in connection to this thread and learning that the evidence had to do with numismatics, but, yet again, I don’t have the reference at hand.

Edit: 1QIsa and IQIsb and relation to and agreement with the LXX and Theodotion, and the antiquity/textual tradition of those mss., right? And I think the Samaritan Pentateuch was brought up, although I can’t find the post immediately (I’m going off your quotation of me to refresh my memory here).

 

[patrick457]

For what? I forgot this thread entirely, although it was still in my subscriptions.

I’ll re-read it and see - I’m assuming it was evidence for later activity at Qumran than ~68 AD? For some reason I remember looking that up in connection to this thread and learning that the evidence had to do with numismatics, but, yet again, I don’t have the reference at hand.

We’ve done that.

To be more exact, Fr. Roland de Vaux identified three phases in the sectarian occupation of Qumran, based on stratigraphic and architectural evidence: Period Ia (third quarter of 2nd century BC), Period Ib (100 BC-31 BC), and Period II (4-1 BC-AD 68). The site was first inhabited during the late Iron Age (8th-7th century BC), then abandoned for several hundred years when the new population that established the sectarian settlement arrived, perhaps around the reign of John Hyrcanus (Period Ia). The settlement then expanded greatly and acquired its definitive form during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (Period Ib). The end of Period Ib was marked by an earthquake and a fire, when the site was temporarily abandoned. Soon the site was cleared and reoccupied by the same community that had left it, up to its destruction by fire in AD 68, which marks the end of the sectarian settlement of Qumran (Period II). There is a Period III after that, wherein a small garrison of Roman soldiers apparently inhabited the site, at least up until Masada fell in AD 73-4. And yes, there is also some indication of a temporary small-scale occupation of the site during the Bar Kochba period, the main evidence consisting of ten coins under a bowl buried under a room, though it does seem quite unlikely that the occupants were the same community who inhabited it before.

So goes Fr. De Vaux’s scheme. Though of course other possible scenarios also exist: Jodi Magness (The Archaeology of Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls) has proposed that Period Ia, due to scanty evidence for this supposed phase, does not exist per se but should instead be considered an early stage of Period Ib. Period Ib is then to be divided into two stages: a pre-earthquake phase (100-50 BC - 31 BC) and a post-earthquake phase (31 BC-9/8 BC or some time thereafter). She disagrees with Fr. De Vaux’s proposal of temporary abandonment of the site.

Edit: 1QIsa and IQIsb and relation to and agreement with the LXX and Theodotion, and the antiquity/textual tradition of those mss., right? And I think the Samaritan Pentateuch was brought up, although I can’t find the post immediately (I’m going off your quotation of me to refresh my memory here).

Yeah…to be more exact the DSS, the Masoretic Text and the Septuagint.

 

[AnselmIHSV]

I was wondering a couple of things.

First, I always thought that the AV was used as an aid in the translation of the DR?

Second, there is one verse that comes to mind. In Genesis where the DR translate that the "
Woman" will crush the head of the serpent.

Which I thought was more true to the Vulgate?

I’m very familiar with the KJV and RSV and have used the DR and I honestly don’t see any glaring discrepencies in the DR. Now there is langauage difference, but with the same meaning IMHO.

 

[Khalid]

The original D-R was one of the sources of the KJV NT, and the prime source for its Latinate vocabulary (justification, victim, propitiation, coheir) and for its spelling of OT names (Esias, etc.). The 1749-52 Douay-Rheims Challoner (the only revision sold today) came closer to the text of the KJV in almost every place it was edited. So, both influenced each other.

Gen 3:15 has to do, in Latin, with “ipsa” (she/her) and “ipsum” (seed). The LXX and Hebrew agree with “ipsum”, reading “seed” in their respective languages. Some Vetus Latinae read “ipsum”, but most of the Fathers and the Vulgate quote “ipsa”. It’s one of those things that’s very possible to be a scribal error, but, in any case, introduces no error in to the sense of the text.

P.S. Didn’t get to the library today.

 

[patrick457]

P.S. Didn’t get to the library today.

Well I’ll keep on waiting then.

 

[Khalid]

I’ve been busy this time of year: yet to hit the library, and the university’s going on break soon (I’m not sure if the library remains open). I’ve not forgotten about this thread again. Maybe we can make the world record for longest debate?

 

[patrick457]

I’ve been busy this time of year: yet to hit the library, and the university’s going on break soon (I’m not sure if the library remains open). I’ve not forgotten about this thread again. Maybe we can make the world record for longest debate?

Quick, somebody contact Guiness!

 

[Khalid]

Weekly update: still here. Library closed for public use (maybe students can still use it? I managed to get a pass not being a student), re-opening on Jan 7 I think. Still not contacted Guinness, either.